Fires of Driftwood eBook

For they were slaves in Babylon,
And now they’re walking free—­
They leave their chains in Babylon,
I bear my chains with me!

At night a sound of singing
The vast encampment fills;
“Jerusalem! Jerusalem!”
It sweeps the nearing hills—­

But no one sings of Babylon
(Their home of yesterday)
And no one prays for Babylon,
And I—­I dare not pray!

Last night the Prophet saw me;
And, while he held me there,
The holy fire within his eyes
Burned all my secret bare.

“What! Sigh you so for Babylon?”
(I turned away my face)
“Here’s one who turns to Babylon,
Heart traitor to her race!”

I follow and I follow!
My heart upon the rack;
I follow to Jerusalem—­
The long road stretches back

To Babylon, to Babylon!
And every step I take
Bears farther off from Babylon
A heart that cannot break.

Last Spring

This morning at the door
I heard the Spring.
Quickly I set it wide
And, welcoming,
“Come in, sweet Spring,” I cried,
“The winter ash, long dried,
Waits but your breath to rise
On phantom wing.”

A brown leaf shivered by,
A soulless thing—­
My heart in quick dismay
Forgot to sing—­
Twisted and grim it lay,
Kin to the ghost-ash gray,
Dead, dead—­strange herald this
Of jocund Spring!

I spurned it from the door.
I longed that Spring
Should come with song and glow
And rush of wing,
Not this, not this!—­But O
Dead leaf, a year ago
You were the dear first-born
Of Hope and Spring!

Presence

By a sense of Presence, keenly dear,
I, who thought her distant,
Knew her near.

By an echo that most sweetly woke,
I, long keyed to silence,
Knew she spoke.

By her nearness and the word she said,
I, who thought her living,
Knew her dead.

In an Autumn Garden

To-night the air discloses
Souls of a million roses,
And ghosts of hyacinths that died too soon;
From Pan’s safe-hidden altar
Dim wraiths of incense falter
In waving spiral, making sweet the moon!

Aroused from fragrant covers,
The vows of vanished lovers
Take voice in whisperings that rise and pass;
Where the crisped leaves are lying
A tremulous, low sighing
Breathes like a startled spirit o’er the grass.

Ah, Love! in some far garden,
In Arcady or Arden,
We two were lovers! Hush—­remember
not
The years in which I’ve missed you—­
’Twas yesterday I kissed you
Beneath this haunted moon! Have you forgot?

Rose Dolores

The moan of Rose Dolores, she made her plaint
to me,
“My hair is lifted by the wind that sweeps in
from the sea;
I taste its salt upon my lips—­O jailer,
set me free!”